The Alaska State Archives of the Division of Libraries, Archives, and Museums has been awarded $220,146 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through the Rediscovering Our Revolutionary Tradition grant program to support a two-year archival project, Foundations of Statehood: Alaska’s Constitutional Development and the Process of Self-Determination and Full Representation.

Project Details

The Alaska State Archives project will include archival processing, enhanced catalog description, digitization of audiovisual materials, and transcription. The project will result in improving access for researchers, educators, students, and the public to explore the historical records of one of the defining periods in Alaska’s history, supporting new scholarship, classroom learning, and a deeper public understanding of Alaska’s path to self-government.

In addition, the project will produce a comprehensive online guide to statehood-related records held throughout the Alaska State Archives, bringing together resources from multiple record groups into a single point of discovery. Four standards-aligned lesson plans for grades 9–12 will also be developed using newly accessible primary sources.

Other Grants

NEH granted funding to preserve and digitize archival records of the Dakota Territory documenting the region’s governance and relationship with the U.S. federal government prior to North and South Dakota’s admission to the Union in 1889. A grant to the Mariners’ Museum and Park in Virginia will stabilize fragile maritime artifacts excavated from the York River site where some 40 ships were sunk by American cannons during the 1781 Battle of Yorktown.

Original reporting: Must Read Alaska (Anchorage) — read the source article.